GenXJamerican

Anil Dash recently shared this N.Y. Times piece about the negative reaction within Silicon Valley to a number of CEOs attending the screening of an Amazon-produced documentary about Melania Trump.  Dash has been consistent for many years in encouraging people in tech to vocally oppose things that are wrong and uses this story for the same purpose.  The piece links to an open letter calling for ICE to leave our cities.  But I’m unimpressed by this latest crisis of conscience in tech because of their lack of introspection regarding how their treatment of women and underrepresented minorities over many years contributed to our current environment.

I fully understand the shock and anger over our government’s murder of Alex Pretti.  But I can’t help but contrast that to the lack of reaction to Andreesen Horowitz hiring Daniel Penny as a deal partner, soon after his acquittal for strangling Jordan Neely to death on the NYC subway.  Venture capital as an industry has funded startups with black founders at a rate of just 0.4%. The same Jeff Dean quoted in the N.Y. Times piece saying “Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this,” also fired Timnit Gebru under questionable circumstances in 2020.  Google would go on to fire Margaret Mitchell, co-founder of their AI ethics unit early in 2021.  Both Meta and Amazon embarked very quickly on a full-scale retreat from their DEI initiatives in the wake of Trump’s re-election in 2024.  In this respect, they followed the lead of Elon Musk, the founders of Basecamp, and the CEO of Coinbase in becoming “anti-woke”.

The tech industry consistently fails to see the connection between how the way they devalue their employees enables the ways Trump’s regime devalues everyone.  We are living through every warning about AI that the women researchers followed and interviewed in the documentary Coded Bias gave us 6 years ago.  This morning’s news brings word that Amazon is cutting another 16,000 jobs, supposedly because of AI improvements.  Meanwhile, some of the most prominent usages of GenAI include generating CSAM and the Trump administration altering photos in support of their mass deportation agenda.  The data center that powers Grok has been poisoning the air in a predominantly black community in Memphis for some time now.  GenAI as an industry is built on industrial-scale theft of copyrighted works—unfortunately aided and abetted by at least one federal court ruling so far.  Without exception, the CEO of Anthropic argues against regulation of GenAI even as he warns of it stealing jobs, all while raising billions of dollars.

Criticism of an out-of-control and unaccountable federal government is good and necessary as far as it goes.  But absent the industry doing some serious introspection and taking action to undo the broader harms to people they are enabling and actively engaged in, it looks like virtue signaling on the way back to business as usual.

Maria Bustillos wrote this great piece on the inadequacy of Scott Galloway’s kinder, gentler approach to the manosphere using Jessica Winter’s review of his latest book as a launching pad.  The arrival of this piece couldn’t have been more perfectly timed, given the laughter we’re still enjoying over how wounded Elon Musk was by a Joyce Carol Oates tweet that called him uneducated and uncultured. Bustillos' piece prompted this insight for me regarding the manosphere (which I initially shared on Bluesky):

A large part of what is broken about the so-called manosphere, whether for the scammers, the marks, or the well-meaning (like Galloway) is that their conception of manhood is as a performance—for other men.

A manhood which is primarily about what other men think of you cannot help but be shallow and unstable—constantly under threat.  The last time I wrote about manhood in response to Ian Dunt's “progressive” attempt to do so, the fictional example I used highlighted the problem with male expectations of what masculinity should look like. This fundamental flaw of the manosphere cannot be fixed by Galloway’s 3 Ps of manhood: (Men) Protect, Provide, and Procreate.  Even though the 3 Ps are ostensibly about men’s proper relationship to women, they skip over the fundamental requirement for a man to have a clear sense of self.  Winter’s piece digs deeper into these misguided attempts to “reform” the manosphere by Governor Gavin Newsom and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Their presidential aspirations make them uniquely unsuited to this task, not only because it’s obvious their care doesn’t extend beyond what might get them elected, but because they’ve “accepted at face value [Charlie] Kirk’s premise—young American men are in terrible and unprecedented straits, and those currents are yanking them rightward” as Winter says.  They believe (cynically, in my opinion) that if they pull just the right levers in government that they can fix what’s wrong with young American men.  Unspoken in the Kirk premise is that the young American men being discussed are white.  Also unacknowledged in this premise is the sense of entitlement and grievance behind it.  The manosphere tells these men that they are owed something—despite not having put in any work for that something at all.  Kirk in particular told them that women and people of color have things they shouldn’t and don’t deserve.  Men with inner lives hollow enough to be swayed by racist messaging like that won’t be convinced to vote for you with “new zoning regulations and tax credits for first-time homeowners”, Emanuel’s offering to young men according to Winter’s piece.

One of many things Bustillos’ piece does well is highlight the wide variety of manhood ideals in fiction and contrasts them with how flat Galloway’s concept of masculinity is by comparison.  One example she names who’s worth expanding on further is Captain James T. Kirk.  The womanizer in space aspect of the character is stereotypical, even offensive to our modern sensibilities.  But the friendship between Kirk and Spock actually provides a powerful example of the type of relationship we underrate the importance of cultivating—deep friendships with other men.  If you read the Bible (either academically or as a believer), you’ve encountered a similar relationship between Jonathan—the son of King Saul—and David.  There is plenty of debate regarding whether or not their relationship was sexual, but I fall in the camp of those who believe the friendship was deep and platonic. Another manhood ideal in fiction who wasn’t in Bustillos’ list is Captain Jack Aubrey, as depicted by Russell Crowe in the movie Master and Commander.  He isn’t defined solely by his skill as a sailor and captain who inspires fierce loyalty in his crew.  He also plays the violin.  His friendship with Dr. Stephen Maturin includes a mutual love of music and we see and hear them play violin and cello duets.  Benjamin Sisko—my favorite captain in my favorite genre—maintains numerous hobbies including the piano, baseball, and cooking (notable because of the availability of replicators).

As a society, we’ve put ourselves in a place where our discussions of masculinity revolve around romantic relationships with women and competency at “manly” things.  We don’t talk seriously about deep friendships with other men and we don’t talk about the importance of hobbies.  By hobby I don’t mean a side hustle or something you monetize.  I mean a thing you enjoy and pursue just because you like it.  I think “manosphere men” are there in large part because they lack other interests.  They don’t read books, watch movies or plays, go to art museums, concerts, or sporting events.  My parents took my sister and I to all of those things on a regular basis.

Over the years I’ve picked up and dropped any number of hobbies, thanks in large part to a close friend who has a wide variety of interests.  We’ve sailed boats together, cycled, and gone downhill skiing.  We got into German boardgames because of a couple of his roommates.  He taught me film photography.  Marriage and twins (and age) meant less time (and energy) for certain hobbies.  I haven’t touched the piano seriously in years (which I regret).  Nor have I been on the bike like I used to be.  But I do play videogames with my daughter more and more regularly.  I read books (dead tree, audiobooks, and ebooks).  I listen to music.  I write (occasionally the old-fashioned way, in a notebook with a pen instead of online).  When I go on vacation, I take photos.

The main point of many of these hobbies was just spending time with friends doing something fun.  Some of them built useful skills.  Some of them turned out to be great ways to spend time with women I wanted relationships with.  The solitary ones (especially reading & writing) help me maintain my inner life—my beliefs, what I think, how I feel, what (and whom) I value--my sense of self.  What the manosphere offers men (even Galloway’s slightly more benevolent version) are shortcuts to companionship and a narrative that makes society accountable for the work of understanding and growing themselves that they’ve failed to do.  There’s more to being a man than cleaning your room, or competence at work, or being fit.  You need to build and maintain an inner life, and an outer life (including hobbies)!  Spend less time being concerned with people who don’t care about you beyond your vote for them, or the money in your wallet they want.  Spend more time with people who matter to you—and whom you matter to—regardless of where you work or how much you make.